Trump again previews good economic news
WASHINGTON — For the second time in two months, U.S. President Donald Trump broke with standard White House practices this week and appeared to offer a glowing preview of positive economic news.
Past presidents have generally refrained from mentioning any government economic reports the day before they’re publicly released. Among other reasons, the idea is to avoid triggering a hasty or ill-considered response in global financial markets.
But just as Trump did before the government’s May jobs report was released in early June, he chose to brag before Friday morning’s release of the government’s estimate of how fast the economy grew during the AprilJune quarter.
“Our numbers are fantastic right now,” Trump declared Thursday.“You’re going to see on Friday what happens with GDP.”
He added, referring to predictions for the annual economic growth rate last quarter: “One of the geniuses on Wall Street said, ‘5.3.’ OK, we’ll take anything with a ‘4’ in front. We’ll go nice and slowly, right?”
Later Thursday, the president made a similar assertion while speaking at a steel plant in Illinois: “If it has a 4 in front of it,” he said, “we’re happy.”
The White House didn’t respond to a question about whether Trump had been briefed in advance on Friday’s report on economic growth. But on Friday, the government estimated that the economy did in fact expand at a 4.1 per cent annual pace in the second quarter, up from a 2.2 per cent rate in the first three months of the year. The strong gain, fueled in part by temporary factors that aren’t likely to be sustained, were roughly within expectations from economists and investors.
But the president had chosen to boastfully publicize economic data ahead of its release, similar to his preview of the May jobs report. Slightly more than an hour before the June 1 release of that report, Trump had tweeted that he was “looking forward to seeing the employment numbers at 8:30 this morning.”
The value of the dollar immediately rose and Treasury yields jumped in response. At 8:30 a.m. Eastern time that day, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that 223,000 jobs had been added in May, surpassing expectations, and that the unemployment rate had fallen to 3.8 per cent.
Trump had been briefed about the jobs numbers ahead of their public release, said Larry Kudlow, director of the White House National Economic Council.